Considered to be a leading exponent of “spectral music” and sometimes compared to György Ligeti for his use of microtonality, Haas has lectured and taught courses on the subject, but also has said he’s uncomfortable being pigeonholed, noting simply that, “I am a composer, not a microtonalist.”

As a distinguished guest composer for the MICF, Haas (pictured) will work with the eight resident composers and resident ensemble Alarm Will Sound, and will give a public presentation on his music.

Two of his works will be played during the festival. Alarm Will Sound will perform Haas’ “Remix” as part of their concert on Thursday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre, and the Mizzou New Music Ensemble will play his “…aus freier Lust…verbunden” during the “Mizzou New Music” concert on Friday, July 28.

Haas’ compositions range from chamber pieces, including seven string quartets, to orchestral works, operas, and concertos. His hour-long “in vain,” written in 2000 for 24 musicians, has been called “path-breaking” and is regarded as one of the most important new compositions of the 21st century.

Haas’ music has been performed by ensembles and orchestras all over the world, and his works have been part of festivals including Wien Modern in Vienna, Musikprotokoll in Graz, Witten, Huddersfield, Royaumont, Venice Biennale, and Festival d’Automne in Paris, as well as at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse and the Salzburg Festival 2011.

He has received many national and international awards, including the 2007 Grand Austrian State Prize for Music, the country’s highest artistic honor; the Music Award of the City of Vienna in 2012, the Music Award Salzburg in 2013, and numerous others.

Haas, who will turn 64 next month, was born in Graz, Austria and grew up in Tschagguns, a village in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. He studied composition, piano, and music pedagogy at the Musikhochschule in Graz, and then did post-graduate study at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna with Friedrich Cerha, who’s been described as “the doyen of Austrian composers.” He also participated in the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1980, 1988 and 1990, and the computer music course at IRCAM in 1991.

He began teaching in 1978 at the Musikhochschule, and in 2005 also started lecturing at the Hochschule in Basel, Switzerland. In 2013, he was appointed MacDowell Professor of Music at Columbia University in New York City, where he continues to teach.

“In Vain” performed by Ensemble Dal Niente, recorded at the Chicago premiere on February 28, 2013 at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts.

“ATTHIS” (2009), performed for the St. Petersburg International New Music Festival by Ensemble for New Music Tallinn, with Merje Roomere and Eva-Maria Sumera (violins), Talvi Nurgamaa (viola), Jarkko Launonen (cello), Kristin Kuldkepp (double bass), Helena Tuuling (clarinet), Sabina Yordanova (bassoon), Jürnas Rähni (horn), and Rainer Kohlberger, visuals and real-time animation, conducted by Arash Yazdani. Recorded on Friday, May 20, 2016 at the Erarta Museum and Galleries of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg.

“Sayaka” performed by Radar Ensemble, with Jonathan Shapiro (percussion) and Felix Kroll (accordion).

The website I Care If You Listen, which has an international following among composers, musicians, and new music enthusiasts, offered extensive coverage of the festival with “5 Questions for Stefan Freund,” which included several photos and a SoundCloud playlist of the 2016 MICF’s eight world premieres.

Freund – the artistic director of the MICF and the Mizzou New Music Initiative, professor of composition at Mizzou, and cellist for Alarm Will Sound – used the opportunity to tell ICIYL’s worldwide audience all about the festival and how it fits into MNMI’s array of programs for composers at all stages of their careers.

On Sunday, July 16, the Columbia Daily Tribune published a feature story, “Face the Music,” previewing the MICF. The article by the Tribune‘s Aarik Danielsen, which was the cover story of the paper’s “Sunday Blend” section (pictured), featured interviews with resident composers Carolina Heredia and Christopher Mayo.

In addition, over the past few weeks the festival’s resident and distinguished guest composers all have talked with KMUC’s Trevor Harris for the station’s weekly “Mizzou Music” program, which airs at 6:00 p.m. every Wednesday. Those interviews have been archived on KMUC’s website.

A composer of orchestral, chamber, vocal, and electronic music, Mayo (pictured) received his bachelor of music degree with honors at the University of Toronto, where he was awarded the Glenn Gould Composition Prize and the William Erving Fairclough Scholarship. He relocated to London in 2003 to study at the Royal College of Music, where he earned a master of music in 2004 and a Ph.D in composition in 2011.

Other recent projects include “Streets become Liars,” which was premiered in March by Crash Ensemble at New Music Dublin 2017, and, of course, “Beast (for Hugo Ball),” the work Mayo has written for Alarm Will Sound to perform at the MICF’s “Eight World Premieres” grand finale on Saturday, July 29 at the Missouri Theatre.

Characterized by a distinctive rhythmic language and a wide range of influences, Mayo’s music has been performed by orchestras including the LSO, BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and others.

He frequently collaborates with artists from other disciplines, and in recent years has created new dance scores for Rambert Dance Company, New Movement Collective, and for the English National Ballet’s performance at the Coronation Gala at Buckingham Palace. Mayo’s chamber opera “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” was cited as a “deft mix of documentary, pulsating drones, electric guitar and sparing percussion” in 2014 by BBC Music Magazine.

Christopher Mayo was interviewed by the Columbia Tribune‘s Aarik Danielsen for a feature story about the 2017 MICF, which you can read here. He also was interviewed by KMUC’s Trevor Harris for the station’s “Mizzou Music” program, and you can listen to that interview here.

Regucera also has considerable experience in concert production, having served as production director of UC Berkeley’s Eco Ensemble, production and operations manager of the University of California, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, and as artistic production director for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players.

Regucera (pictured) describes his compositions as engaged with “the embodied and acoustical energy of sound and its production, the erotics of performance, the musical vocabulary of popular music, and noise.”

For the MICF, he’s written a new work called “CRVD” that Alarm Will Sound will perform as part of the festival’s “Eight World Premieres” grand finale on Saturday, July 29.

In addition to music written for the concert stage, Regucera’s work intersects with visual and performance art, most notably in the piece “Communication,” which was featured in 2013 as part of the group show “Seelenwäsche” at the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz, Austria; and “Schlachtfeld (a)”, performed by the composer in collaboration with Hong Kong-based choreographer Elysa Wendi.

You can hear samples of Amadeus Regucera’s music on his SoundCloud page and via the embedded players below.

“Skin, stretched upon the frame”
Written for and premiered by David Milnes and the University of California, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra in March 2017 at Hertz Concert Hall

The videos were produced by Michael Boles and Nicholas Barwick of Mizzou’s Academic Support Center and by Dale H. Lloyd, working under the direction of Mizzou New Music Initiative managing director Jacob Gotlib.

Dan Visconti, one of the two distinguished guest composers at the 2017 Mizzou International Composers Festival, is known both for his music and for his work as a speaker, writer, and activist seeking “to address social issues through music by re-imagining the arts as a form of cultural and civic service.”

Visconti’s biography describes his compositions as “rooted in the improvisational energy and maverick spirit of rock, folk music, and other vernacular performance traditions,” and the Cleveland Plain Dealer has characterized his work as “both mature and youthful, bristling with exhilarating musical ideas and a powerfully crafted lyricism.”

As a distinguished guest composer for the MICF, Visconti (pictured) will work with the eight resident composers and Alarm Will Sound, and give a public presentation on his music. The festival will include performances of two of his works – “Psychedelia,” a brand new piece composed for Alarm Will Sound that they’ll play during their concert on Thursday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre, and “Fractured Jams,” which the Mizzou New Music Ensemble will perform on Friday, July 28.

Other recent projects include “Amplified Soul,” a showpiece written specifically for Venezuelan piano virtuoso Gabriela Martinez; “ANDY: A Popera,” an opera/cabaret hybrid commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and inspired by the life, work, and philosophy of pop artist Andy Warhol; and the interactive video game opera “Permadeath,” a collaboration with acclaimed Pulitzer-winning librettist Cerise Jacobs and director Michael Counts.

His honors include the Rome Prize, Berlin Prize, and awards from the Koussevitzky Foundation at the Library of Congress, Fromm Foundation, Naumburg Foundation, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In addition to his composer residency with the California Symphony, he recently completed a multi-year residency with opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, New York City Opera, and the Glimmerglass Festival as recipient of the Douglas Moore Fellowship in American Opera.

Visconti’s music has been performed at venues including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles’s Disney Hall, London’s Barbican Theatre, and Sydney Opera House.

He currently serves as director of artistic programming at Chicago’s Fifth House Ensemble, and works with young musicians at the ensemble’s annual Fresh Inc Festival on cultivating musical careers in line with their own unique vision and values. Visconti also recently was named artistic advisor at Astral Artists, a nonprofit intensive mentoring program that specializes in developing the early careers of extraordinary classical musicians.

You can hear samples of Visconti’s music on his SoundCloud page and via the embedded players below.

“Lonesome Roads” performed in May 2017 by Fifth House Ensemble.

“Black Bend” from “Hitchhiker’s Tales,” performed by Sybarite5, with Sami Merdinian and Sarah Whitney (violins), Angela Pickett (viola), Laura Metcalf (cello), and Louis Levit (double bass), for the 2013 International Society of Double Bassists Convention at the Eastman School Of Music’s Kilbourn Hall.

“Amplified Soul,” written for and performed by Gabriela Martinez on her first album.

Composer Robert Sirota will discuss his new work “Three Nocturnes” in a pre-concert talk before Alarm Will Sound’s world premiere performance of it for the Mizzou International Composers Festival on Thursday, July 27 at the Missouri Theatre. Sirota’s talk will begin at 7:00 p.m., and the concert starts at 7:30 p.m.

A native New Yorker who now splits his time between New York City and Maine, Robert Sirota has been called “a quintessentially American composer” by ClassicalLite. Over the past 40 years, his chamber, orchestral, and liturgical works have been performed all over the world, and he has been the recipient of numerous awards, honors and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Meet The Composer, the American Music Center, and many others.

As a teacher, he served as director of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, chairman of the department of music and performing arts professions at New York University, director of Boston University’s school of music, and from 2005 to 2012, president of Manhattan School of Music. Sirota’s “Three Nocturnes” was commissioned by Alarm Will Sound specifically for the Mizzou International Composers Festival.

Admission to the pre-concert talk is included in the ticket price for the concert. Single tickets for all Mizzou International Composers Festival concerts are priced at $18 for adults, $10 for students. Tickets can be charged by phone using Visa, MasterCard or Discover by calling 1-573-882-3781. To buy tickets online, visit http://composersfestival.missouri.edu/.

Lara (pictured) joined the Mizzou faculty last fall as assistant professor of cello and the newest member of the Esterhazy Quartet.

For the MICF, she’ll perform a program of works dedicated to iconic Swiss conductor Paul Sacher, including “Trois Strophes sur le Nom de Sacher” by Henri Dutilleux, and several pieces composed as part of the “Mystery Variations” project celebrating the 50th birthday of Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen.

As an ensemble and solo musician, Lara has performed across North America, South America, Asia, and Europe. She is co-founder of Trio Séléné and was formerly cellist of the Calla Quartet and the Franklin String Quartet.

Lara has worked with many contemporary composers, including Fernando Buide, Krzystof Penderecki, Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe, and Jeffrey Wood. She has performed and/or premiered new works in numerous concerts and festivals including the Percussive Arts Society International Convention and Summergarden at the New York MoMA.

She is a graduate of Yale University, where she earned her undergraduate degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and an M.M. in cello performance. As a recipient of a C.V. Starr Doctoral Fellowship, Lara then completed her D.M.A. at The Juilliard School

Before coming to Mizzou, Lara taught at Austin Peay State University in Nashville, where she also performed as co-principal of the Gateway Chamber Orchestra, guest principal of the Paducah Symphony, and in the Nashville Opera Orchestra.

While in the Nashville area, she also worked frequently as a studio musician, recording with Willie Nelson on his album For the Good Times: A Tribute to Ray Price, as well as performing on video game soundtracks for Insomniac, Oculus Rift, and Electronic Arts (including Madden 16).

Lara also has been heard on NPR, at major venues such as New York’s Alice Tully Hall and London’s Wigmore Hall and at festivals including Birdfoot, Kneisel Hall, Sarasota, Banff, and Festival Pablo Casals (France).

Shortly after moving to Columbia last year, Lara was a guest on KMUC’s “Mizzou Music” program, and you can hear that interview here.